The starting point. She looks good….but there are a few surprises underneath.

As a follow on to the previous blog entry titled “The Chevelle Build Begins,” this week’s blog post is a photo documentary courtesy Jeff Allison at Allison Customs. He’s got the teardown of the Chevelle completely done now and has done the initial inspection. The good news is that I didn’t lie to him in telling him that there could be be problems. The bad news is that it’s the worst case scenario. Believe it or not, the Chevelle that Jeff is starting with is 1000 times better than the car we started with in 1993.  Long story short, when we did the original restoration of the car you could buy very little in the way of restoration parts, and the shop that did the body work was on a time and dollars budget that didn’t leave much room for fabrication (and truth be told I’m not sure they had the skills to fab stuff up anyway).

The body was not securely tied to the frame aft of the drivers seat, and the previous shop made a few “creative” choices” when doing their work, so Jeff has his work cut out for him. It’s going to take a full floor, rockers (inside and out), full trunk, full quarters (including door jambs), and a whole lot of straightening. Luckily Allison Customs is great at what they do, and National Parts Depot has absolutely everything we need! I’ll post the full build details next week, but look for a solid car to leave Allison Customs wearing full Detroit Speed Suspension!

Jeff and his boys take the front clip for a walk.
Body will be off soon!
This is the rear floor brace. That reddish hole is where a body mount location should be. It hasn’t been there since about 1977. Allison Customs will fix that!
This is the inner quarter on the drivers side. Note that it’s not really tied to the floor or the wheel well. Bummer.
This is the body brace above the rear end and is shot from the right tear wheel well. That chunk of square tubing was inserted by the previous shop to give it a tad bit of structure. (It didn’t work.)
Body on the cart. Since there were no body mount to bolt the jig up to Jeff strapped it down. Now the fun begins.

-Robert Kibbe

TheMuscleCarPlace.com | Muscle Cars for Sale

5 Responses

  1. Rob,

    Looks like the Ranchero that I am restoring except you might have a little more frame available than I am starting with! Can’t wait to see the finished framework and how they repair it!

    Great podcast, have been listening since episode 1.

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